apocalypse eyes
by Magery
Summary: You will remember me for centuries. [the almost-journal of a Guardian, across the reaches of space, the horrors of war, and the silences in between. chapter five: utilitarianism]
1. memento mori

Do I remember death?

Shrapnel tears through my helmet, so that the last thing I see before I die is what kills me.

An explosion blooms beside me, tossing me into a wall - the blast is too much, too close, and my neck snaps on impact.

My hands do not move fast enough; the corona of voidstuff in my hand sparks and dies as claws rip out my throat.

I am halfway through slamming another round into my rifle when a line of fire and blood lights up the air, and, coincidentally, most of my internal organs.

One day, the fight becomes a race to see who can throw their grenade first. I lose.

On another, I am scouting a room, but do not see anything of note - apart from the knife that sprouts out of my eye.

It is hard to tell where the burning smell comes from: the residue from the latest Gatling barrage, or what remains of my lower body.

A shockwave knocks me off my feet, but I am saved from the indignity of falling over by another; though, unfortunately, there is still little I can do about the spine-shattering whiplash.

It's amazing, really, that in a universe of teleportation, time manipulation, and the Traveler, a sword through the gut kills me just as easily as it would have thousands of years ago.

Miscalculating a jump can sometimes prove embarrassing - in this case, embarrassingly fatal, as I slip down the edge of one of the Moon's vast chasms and just keep _falling_.

In a sniper's duel, the world narrows to your scope, and your target; as such, I am too slow in reacting to the thin red beam that marks me for an express delivery of third-degree burns, pressure damage, and broken bones, courtesy of the House of Devils.

When I have nothing better to do, I venture to the Crucible. It's always an exercise in patience, and caution - move too quickly, too recklessly, and you'll lose your head.

My friends and I once sought to breach the Vault of Glass. We never even made it past the door.

One of my greatest fears in this world is running out of ammunition, because the enemy never do: a fact they love nothing more than to demonstrate at length to every part of my body.

I could go on.

I have died by every possible hand in every possible way for every possible reason. And I remember them all.

From what little I recall of my previous life, I would have killed for this mockery of immortality.

And oh, how I have. For every death of mine, I grant a hundred more. War is a struggle between pride and life - and I am proud of how many lives I have taken. It is a slow week if I do not kill a brigade's worth alone.

Do I remember death?

In truth, I remember little else.

* * *

**Part one in a series of drabbles. Updates will be short and sporadic - it is, after all, the journal of a Guardian, as they snatch moments of stillness within the chaos of their existence. **


	2. two edges of the same blade

I have a friend.

Do you know how strange that is?

I am destruction. I kill and am killed and kill again. They call me a Guardian but I am no shield. I am the knife they never see coming. The bullet they never feel leaving. I am a weapon, a tool, not alive or dead but somewhere in between.

And yet I have a friend.

His name is Rantharin.

I would say that he keeps me sane but sanity is not required. How could it be? We—the Guardians, the swords of the Speaker—fight impossible odds for impossible ideals. If we were sane we would have used our first bullet on our Ghosts and our second on ourselves. It would be cowardice but at least then we would have been free.

I realise I sound bitter. I will not lie to you and say I am not.

This is a war I did not choose.

I remember little from my past life—a face, a name, though neither belongs to the other—but I have asked my Ghost about me. He remade me, as the dead hand of a dead god, and he knows my body in ways I cannot because it is his will that anchors my Light to this world.

He said he could not be certain, but that from where he found me, from what surrounded me and from the resonance of my Light, he believed I died fighting. Not because I was a soldier—I was reborn as a weapon but my Ghost is sure I was not always this way—but because when the void stares back your only hope is to shoot out its eyes and blind it.

I did not choose this war.

My Ghost chose me.

I should tell you, now, that I do not hate him for it.

I said it was his choice but I lied.

I said it was his will but I lied.

It is the will of the Traveler and I must serve the god that has been chosen for me.

I should tell you, also, that I do not hate the Traveler.

It sleeps. It is no more aware of itself than I was before my resurrection. In the moment before its defeat, it acted as all living things do. It acted to survive. I cannot blame it for that - not when I sit here, still lacking the resolve to end myself before the rest of the universe can.

Perhaps I should return to my friend.

He is a Hunter. He uses a handcannon—almost the same model as mine—and he is better than I am.

I am not weak. I conquered the Black Heart alone and unbroken. I have slain Archons, Nexus Minds, and abominations from the Pit.

He is still better.

In another world, this would be a cause for envy. For jealousy. In another world, I might hate him for taking almost everything I aspire to be, and doing it first.

Here, it is a cause for relief.

When we fight, I know he will kill. When I die, I know he will live. When I lose, I know he will win.

There is no greater security than that of competence.

I call him friend, but that is not quite accurate.

We are arrows, sharing the kinship of the Traveler's quiver.

I do not know what it is like to have friends.

But I know what it means to be a weapon.

* * *

**I should probably mention at this point that Rantharin is not a name of my invention, but one of the pseudonyms of a friend, who I regularly play Destiny alongside. He is, of course, better than I am =P **


	3. the mind-killer

I am afraid.

Three words. Three words that mean more than you can truly comprehend. You can empathise, you can sympathise, but you cannot _understand_. They are like _I love you_, like _I hate you_ \- sentences that takes a second to say but can ring through a thousand years.

I will attempt to explain.

I do not fear death. I taunt it. I flaunt it. I shadow and am shadowed by it. I have said before that I have a friend but really I have two, because wherever I go, death follows. It is all I know.

I do not fear life. I want not for food, or shelter, or even entertainment; a war like this will break you in half an hour but it is never _boring_. I lack neither companionship nor carnality; Guardians eat together and sleep together just as we fight together and die together. It is all we know.

I do not fear my enemies. They are scattered through the stars, a hundred million strong, but there is nothing they can do to me that I will not survive. They cannot take my home: I do not have one. They cannot take my family: I do not have one. They cannot take my freedom: I do not have one. I see the forces arrayed against me and I laugh. Death will be all they know.

No.

I fear myself.

I fear my memories. There are rumors of Guardians who have started to _remember_ \- I do not want to. A glimpse beyond the cage would be cruel indeed.

I fear my body. It is too perfect. My hands are smooth and my toenails neat. Even my hair remains the same. Where are my flaws? Where are my scars?

I fear my mind. I think in aimless circles; I write down thoughts and philosophies that I should not have. I do not exist for self-pity and recriminations. I am meant only to serve.

I fear change. I fear that one day I will wake up and be useless. I fear that one day the war will shift tempos to one I cannot match. I fear that one day I will find an enemy who laughs in the face of bullets and Light.

In short, I _fear_.

And that is why I am afraid.

I am a weapon. I have said this many times before and I will say it many times more. It is the truth that defines my existence.

_I think, therefore I am_.

Words that echo through history. They do not apply to me. My creed is different.

_I kill, therefore I am_.

There is no room within me for fear. And yet I feel it.

Perhaps that is truly makes me afraid.

Maybe I am not afraid of fear, but the fact that I can _feel_ it.

I do not want to be able to feel. Feelings only ever get in the way.

I have as much use for them as I do for a green engram.


	4. life after death

I have seen what comes after death.

And I am terrified.

You hang there, motionless, bodiless. Alone. You are nothing, and yet you _are_. Endless emptiness - a grave nobody will ever know, and a ghost no one will ever see.

This war is hell. That is the only way to describe it. We fight demons and monsters and the broken shards of gods, and we die, and die, and die, until the only thing we have left to learn about death is how to survive it.

I would rather a thousand years of hell than a single year in what comes after.

...I suppose I should explain what led me to this realisation.

First, you must understand that I am a Warlock. I obey the laws of reality the same way I do the Traveler - secure in the knowledge that I can stop whenever I so desire.

I have seen the Void. Twisted it. Taken it. Condensed it into shards and used it to rip open holes in the world.

I have seen the Light. Burned with it. Been burned _by_ it. Wrapped it around my body and used it to ignite the heart of a god.

These are the least of my powers. Parkour tricks my brothers and sisters use to pass the time as we gorge ourselves on deeper mysteries.

I also have a gun. Scratched onto the barrel are the words 'More Light! More Light!' - the last is shaky, the letters rushed and their carving shallow. The Exo who gifted it to me said its name was Light/Beware.

Never before have I heard something so fitting. To a Guardian, the Light is our strength - it makes us stronger, faster, bends the universe to our whims, heals us when we hurt and restores us when we die. We can always do with more Light.

But it is also dangerous. Too much Light, and the universe does not bend. No. It _breaks_. The Warlocks who have learned this, we call the Fireborn. I should know. I am one of them.

Do you know what it means to be Fireborn?

I will tell you.

It means that, when your bones burn beneath your skin, and it feels as though your blood is nothing but liquid Light, you become something_more_. A shadow of divinity. Stories left over from the Golden Age tell us of myths like the phoenix, the fire-bird that lives and dies and lives again. Firebird, Fireborn, they are one and the same.

When we die, supercharged by Light, we do not end the way others do. We do not cease to exist until our Ghosts restore us. No. Our bodies collapse but our minds do not. Instead, they burn on, somehow capable of seeing even though we no longer have eyes, somehow thinking even though we no longer have a brain.

And through it all, something lingers. One word. _Live_.

We scream it into the silence and are reborn in fire and wrath.

It would be inspiring if we were not screaming in fear.


	5. utilitarianism

I have a gun.

Well. That is not precisely correct.

I have _dozens_ of guns. Auto-rifles, pulse rifles, scout rifles, sniper rifles, fusion rifles, handcannons, shotguns, rocket launchers, and heavy machine guns. I have at least two of every kind, and I have used every single one more than once. A Guardian is not so much a soldier as an armoury. We carry the sort of firepower it takes to break an army. Fitting, since that is all we exist to do.

But today, I speak of only one.

They—the gunsmiths, the factions, the philosophers and the vanguard—call it The Trolley Problem. The vendor who sold it to me left me with a parting description, one I would not understand for some time: _Pull the lever. It's the right thing to do_. Even though I am a Warlock, my time is not for research; I do not crawl through ancient manuscripts and the broken records of a forgotten age.

I learn on the battlefield - how a Dreg moves when wounded, how accurate a Hobgoblin's sensors are, how many bullets to the skull it takes to kill a Knight, how best to bring down a Phalanx who will never move his shield. I have taught myself how to kill everything that crosses my path even when my guns click empty and the Light fizzles beneath my skin.

But still, the vendor's words intrigued me. Why would a gun be known as The Trolley Problem—a fusion rifle designed for short-to medium-range disintegration—and why is pulling the lever the right thing to do? Presumably, pulling the lever is one of the solutions to the eponymous trolley problem. Which raises the next question. What _is_ the trolley problem?

As it so happened, it turned out to be a question of morality. One from the Golden Age - a time when there was time to waste on such frivolous things. There is no morality in war. Especially not when your soldiers are immortal. There is no such thing as a suicidal charge to a Guardian, or leaving a man too wounded to go on behind. Just kill him yourself, and he'll be back soon enough.

We do not hesitate, we do not bicker, we do not debate. We fight and we die and we fight again. That is all we have ever done, and it is all we will ever do.

But I digress. The trolley problem that so confused me for a time is, in truth, hilariously simple.

There is a runaway train trolley, speeding down a track.

On that track, there is a fork.

On one side of the fork, five people are tied down.

On the other side, there is only one.

You, the observer, are in a train yard, standing next to the lever that decides which fork the trolley takes.

If you do not pull the lever, the trolley kills the five.

If you do, it kills the one.

You cannot stop the trolley by any method. You cannot remove any person from the tracks.

What do you do?

The Trolley Problem—and this time I speak of the gun—and its description (I have asked around; the words the vendor spoke were not unique to me) tells me to pull the lever. Killing one is better than killing five. It's the right thing to do.

I agree.

Apparently, there were those who did not. Debate over the trolley problem raged for centuries.

I wonder how many of them knew anything of war.

Hmm.

Perhaps I am being unnecessarily cruel. It is a different question for a Guardian; we cannot die. The dead will return, and in the meantime, the five will kill more than the one ever could have. It is simple battlefield logic - maximise your advantages. Kill or be killed. The more you have, the more you can do. We are forged for and from destruction, and those are the laws they melt into our bones.

But, even if I were not a Guardian...

I do not think my answer would change.

* * *

**You have no idea how much I laughed when I first saw The Trolley Problem in Destiny. It is, hands down, my favourite weapon name and description - except maybe Backhanded Compliment and "You look good in red._"_, which is equally brilliant. **

**I take my hat off to whoever writes Destiny's item names and descriptions (and their Grimoire cards). Whether you're one or a hundred, I wish I had half your talent. **

**(If my Guardian sounds like he's preaching, which he probably does, I apologise - his morality is my own (good old utilitarianism), so that likely came over a little harder than I intended)**


End file.
